Contribute

There are several ways to contibute to UFRaw. Basically you should just use the software, report any bugs you encounter and join the discussions on the forum. If you have some programming skills you are welcome to contribute code and participate in the development process. More specific channels of contibutions are listed below.

White Balance Presets

UFRaw gives the user a set of white balance presets and fine tuning according to the camera model. This allows one to set the white balance in UFRaw in exactly the same way as if it was set in the camera.

For UFRaw to offer proper preset white balance settings, it needs to know white balance information specific for your make and model of camera. If your camera is not currently supported for white balance presets, follow these instructions to contribute the information for your specific camera. If your camera is supported, you might still want to recheck that the preset are correct.

• Set your camera to save raw files, and take a picture with the camera set to each of the available preset white balance settings. For example, "fluorescent", "direct sunlight", "cloudy", "flash", etc.

• If your camera allows for white balance fine tuning, then for each preset you should take a picture with no fine tuning and at the extreme values of the fine tuning. For example, -3, 0, and +3. You should not feel obliged to supply these numbers. The criteria is very simple, if you want to have them in the user interface you need supply them.

• Transfer these raw files to your computer and open them with UFRaw. Make sure that White balance is set to Camera WB. Choose Options->Configuration. You need to copy the channel multipliers. It should look like this:

  <ChannelMultipliers>1.980469 1.000000 1.671875</ChannelMultipliers>

  The channel multipliers also appear in the main window, but with less precision digits. Also, it is easier to cut and paste the configuration data.

• You should send the list of your camera presets with the above channel multipliers for each preset plus fine tuning if applicable. If your camera doesn't have fine tuning, you should state so explicitly. You can either open a feature request with this data or send it to me in an e-mail. I also need the name of your camera, in the format UFRaw understands. This can be found under Options->Log and should look like:

  Loading NIKON D70 image from dsc_0113.nef...

• It seems that for some cameras the WB settings are not preset values but some recommendation to the camera's auto WB. To test this you can take two pictures with the same WB setting, but very different lighting condition. If you get the same channel multipliers it means that theses values are valid preset values, that can be used in UFRaw. If they differ, you can send me the information, but I'm still not sure how it will be handled. (It seems that the Pentax *ist DS/DL WB settings are not presets.)

• It would also be useful if you could supply a sample raw file. You can send it to me by mail or upload it to one of the raw samples sites:

  • www.rawsamples.ch
  • raw.fotosite.pl

Currently, UFRaw supports these camera's white balance presets:

UFRaw currently has the following translations with the following contact persons (not necessarily the main translator):

• Czech - Milan Knizek - knizek at volny.cz
• Danish - Niels Kristian Bech Jensen - nkbj at users.sourceforge.net
• Dutch - Simon Oosthoek - pooh22 at users.sourceforge.net
• French - Gaëtan Perrier - gperrier at wanadoo.fr
• German - Lars Becker - lars+ufraw at gatekeeper.vernetzt.org (in preparation)
• Italian - Daniele Medri - dmedri at gmail.com
• Japanese - Yota Kunioka - tyaoknok at gmail.com
• Korean - Homin Lee - ff4500 at gmail.com
• Norwegian - Alvin Brattli - alvin.brattli at gmail.com
• Polish - Polish - tomaszg at alpha.uwb.edu.pl
• Portuguese - Bruno Buys - brunobuys at gmail.com
• Russian - Alexandre Prokoudine - alexandre.prokoudine at gmail.com
• Serbian - Miloš Popović - gpopac at gmail.com
• Spanish - Enrique Jorreto - ejorreto at gmail.com
• Swedish - Daniel Nylander - po at danielnylander.se
• Welsh - Cadan ap Tomos - translatorstar at hotmail.co.uk (in preparation)

If you want to discuss the specific choice of wording in a specific language, you should contact the relevant contact person. If you want to translate UFRaw to another language, you should contact me.

Each translation should have a contact person. There could be a group of translators, but the contact person should make a "long time commitment", and should notify me if he wants to retire.

Translators should be familiar with both the language and digital photography. I think that no translation is better than a bad translation.

About two weeks before a release, I plan to announce a 'string freeze'. This should be enough time to translate the changes from the previous release.

Translators should take care that the translation does not break the structure of the GUI. Specifically, the raw histogram should take the full width of the controls column. Either fit the translation to the GUI, or report a bug on the issue.

Notice that there seem to be some duplicate strings, like "WB" and "White Balance". This is related to the previous point. The idea is that there is a short version that appears in the GUI and a longer version that pops-up as a tooltip.

After 'string freeze', translators should check out the latest version from CVS, run ./autogen.sh && ./configure && cd po && make update-po, update translations and send new files to me or commit themselves, if they have write access to CVS.

Notice that in addition to the po file, there are also a few strings to translate in 'ufraw.desktop'.

Having a partial translation can be annoying to the user. Still, it should be possible to make a partial translation if it is done carefully. Top priority should be given to the GUI. It is not possible to translate the GUI and not the command-line, since some strings overlap. It is possible to skip the translation of the help text in 'ufraw --help'.

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For comments on UFRaw you can contact me at UdiFuchs@ .com

You are also welcome to visit my photography homepage.